First Responder
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: Episode tag for 7.09. SPOILERS. The most important thing in any emergency medical situation is to remain level-headed. Gen.


**Warnings: **Language, mild gore. MAJOR SPOILERS for 7.09 PAST THIS POINT, STOP NOW TO NOT GET SPOILED.

**Additional Warnings:** Oblique spoilers for story here too. A not-nice character says not-nice things that will upset people. Very unkind descriptions of long-term care of a severely brain-injured person. Inaccurate First Aid techniques like whoa.

**Disclaimer:** I didn't originate the characters or the world and I don't claim to own them.

******A/N:**I'm sure loads of people have done tags for this episode already, but here's mine. Unbetaed, I might edit later, and I'm not leaving it in much of a better place than the show did though, sorry. Posted last night on LJ.

-.-  
><strong>First Responder<strong>  
>by CaffieneKitty<br>-.-

"Bobby!" Dean howled, straining to look over his shoulder as the van raced down the road.

Peering into the back, Sam could barely see Bobby's unmoving form. "Dean. Hospital. We passed it on the way into town-"

"I'm on it." Dean focused on the road and floored the accelerator.

Sam dove into the back, knees hitting the van floor as it sped up. Bobby had been thrown back from the doors onto a pile of crap Sam couldn't have cared less about. Blood flowed steadily from Bobby's right temple, nearly black in the darkness.

_Flowing blood, that means-_ Sam pressed his hand to Bobby's neck. _Please, please..._Bobby's pulse flickered under Sam's fingers.

"Dean! He has a pulse!"

Dean's breath shuddered. "Thank god," he said and barreled through a red light, leaning on the horn. The inside of the van flashed red.

Sam grabbed a hunk of cloth from the crap in the back of the van and wadded it over the wound, but then hesitated. _If he's got a skull fracture, pressing on it- _Sam swallowed. Bobby's skull could be cracked. Shattered. Pressing on it would not help.

As Sam frantically tried to staunch the blood flow without pushing too hard, a random memory flashed through his mind; Bobby holding a reddening rag to Dean's head when they were kids. "It's okay. He's not dying, Sammy. Scalp wounds just bleed like a sonofabitch."

Sam had been six. He remembered watching Dean fall off a stack of wrecked cars they'd been told to keep off of, seeing all the blood, being terrified that Dean was dying. Running to get Bobby. Dad was away hunting, but Bobby was there. He remembered Bobby delivering a gruff lecture about how sometimes grown-ups did actually know what they were talking about when they told kids not to do stuff while wrapping Dean's head up with gauze.

Sam swallowed. _Head wounds. First aid for head wounds._ Beyond stopping the bleeding, his mind had gone blank. In the intermittent darkness, he couldn't see anything past Bobby's spreading blood. _How do I- What do I-_

"You know what first aid for a bullet in the brain is, Sam?" said a familiar voice only Sam could hear. "A shroud. A shroud and a six foot deep hole in the ground."

Sam's head snapped up to face the back corner of the van.

Lucifer perched on the lump of the wheel well, teeth flashing in the darkness, Chesire-catlike. "This is a good one, if I say so myself."

_Shut up, you aren't real, I don't have time for you. _Gritting his teeth, Sam looked back down to Bobby, watching the irregular rise and fall of his chest.

"Letting you rescue Gramps here, only to have him get shot and die in your arms?" Lucifer tsked, mock-consolingly. "Aw. So tragic. Your only friend and father-figure, and you screwed up on the big Team Awesome rescue, got him killed. Enough to crush anyone's soul. _So_glad I thought of it."

_Shut up! _Sam pulled Bobby up by the shoulder and shoved his knees under him, resting Bobby's head against his stomach to keep the injury elevated for all the good it might do, feeling helpless.

"Or he can die in your lap!' Lucifer crooned. "That's perfect!"

Sam couldn't spare a second to press his thumb into his palm, make the near-healed cut ache, make Lucifer disappear back into the murky depths of his subconscious. He kept cautious pressure on Bobby's wound.

"You know, I haven't decided yet. Simple bullet in the brain or a skull fracture, something that'll look survivable but won't be." In the dim, rocking space of the van speeding through the night, Lucifer buffed his nails against his chest and examined them. "Nasty. Bleeding out, or bleeding in, cerebral hemorrhage, subdural hematoma, wonderful words. Maybe a nice ricocheting bullet, bouncing around inside that thick skull, turning his brain into pudding. Mmm. I love a good brain pudding."

Sam squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out Lucifer. Just a scalp wound. A graze. It had to be. He didn't dare lift the cloth to look, try to determine whether Bobby would live or die, just kept focused on the flutter of Bobby's pulse under his fingertips.

"You know what I thought might be even better? Having him live."

Sam's eyes twitched open and up at Lucifer.

"Having him live, so brain-damaged he can't even control when he pisses himself. Still fully aware, though! Still knowing everything going on around him, but not able to so much as breathe on his own." Lucifer leaned back, lounging against the van wall. "He nearly lost it when he was in the wheelchair. You remember that, Sam. You think he'd survive, trapped inside himself, no way to communicate, no control over even his most basic body functions?"

Sam looked down at his hand pressing the cloth to Bobby's head, firmly, gently. Blood masked half Bobby's face.

"You think he'd thank you for making him live like that?"

_Shut. Up._

"It could be so sweet, though." Lucifer pouted and fluttered his eyelashes. "You could quit hunting, you and Dean. Take him back to that rat-infested cabin, spoon-feed him and bathe him and change his pants when he craps them for _years. _A real home, just like you always wanted."

_You're not real. He's not real. Ignore him, dumbass,_ Sam told himself. _Bobby needs help. God, please, what else, anything! Shock, keep him warm. _Sam awkwardly shrugged his jacket off his shoulders as the van careened along the dark roads, then pulled the cuffs over his hands off one at a time with his teeth, tasting Bobby's blood. When the jacket was off, Sam slung it over Bobby's chest, trying not to think of shrouds.

Lucifer chuckled. "Cover him up, bury him deep, set him on fire, doesn't matter. He's a goner, and his soul comes down to me."

"No!" Sam blurted out loud.

"What?" shouted Dean from the driver's seat, eyes not leaving the road.

"Just keep driving." Sam gritted. _No way Bobby's soul is yours! No way, never._

"He's done a lot of things, Sam. You know some of them. He even sold his soul once. He killed his wife-"

"She was possessed! He-"

"What?" Dean shouted again.

"Nothing! Keep driving!" Sam glared at Lucifer. _She was possessed and trying to kill him. He didn't murder his wife._

Lucifer tsked again. "Justifications are the refuge of the damned, Sammy."

Sam clenched his teeth and lowered his chin. _If this isn't real, if all this is a hallucination you're making me believe, then Bobby's not dying. He's alive and fine at the scrapyard._

"But you keep saying I'm not real, and that you're living in reality. If I control your perception of reality and you're still downstairs with me, yeah, sure, the old man's fine until his heart chokes on the gunk in his arteries. But if I'm not real, then everything that's happening right now is real and Bobby's gonna die, sprawled in your lap like a Regency heroine. Can't have it both ways, Sam."

Sam hadn't seen Lucifer stand, but he was suddenly at Sam's shoulder, looming, unaffected by the van's wild lurchings. "Wouldn't you rather believe I'm real? Bobby'd be safe, like you say, or as safe as he ever is. No bullet in the head."

Sam's chest clenched. _If... If..._

"It'd just be you and me, and all this would be..." Lucifer made a fluid gesture in the air and 'pah' noise with his lips, like a soap bubble popping. "Gone. Just a holodeck program. But you have to stop resisting me, Sammy. You have to accept that I'm real, and that this-"

_Shut up!_ Sam roared in his mind, narrowly stopping himself from shouting out loud. _This is real. It hurts. It hurts more than- More than-_ Sam swallowed. _Pain is reality, and that's what this is. So shut. The Hell. Up._

Lucifer raised his hands mildly and sauntered across the lurching van to resume his seat on the wheel well. "All right, you want pain, I can do pain. All the same to me. You want to watch your leathery pseudo-dad die? I am totally thrilled to help you with that, Sammy. One horribly tragic death for an old worn-out hairball coming right up."

_Not real, not real._

Lucifer cocked his head and smirked. "Oh, but right now, you really do wish I was, don't you?"

Sam's breath hitched.

"Sam?" Dean's face in the rear-view mirror flickered with the passing street lights.

"Just keep driving!"

Dean's head bobbed once, nodding. "Hard right coming, hold on!"

Lucifer laughed, watching Sam wrap one arm tight around Bobby and the other through the metal framework under Dean's seat. Equipment and weapons slid across the floor as the van tilted and swerved into the Emergency lane of the hospital, tires squealing.

Dean threw the e-brake and flung open his door as the van slid to a stop. "Help! Somebody!"

The side door of the van jerked open. Hospital staffers reached in. In the flashing lights from an arriving ambulance they flared red and white; grotesque bloodied hands reaching, faces contorting in the irregular light, the smell of blood everywhere.

Lucifer's voice didn't need to carry over the noise, bypassing Sam's ears. "Ah. Just like home."

"I'm fine," said Sam, recoiling from the reaching hands. "All the blood's his. Help him!"

"What happened, sir?"

"He's- he's been shot in the head." Sam slid backward across the floor of the van as they eased Bobby out onto a stretcher, staying as much out of the way as possible. "It was a hunting accident."

Still sitting on the wheel well, Lucifer snorted.

Wishing he could check Bobby's pulse once more, Sam let an orderly take over putting pressure on the wound. "His name's Bobby Singer. He's got a pulse, he's breathing, I don't know-"

"It's alright, sir, we've got him." They transferred Bobby quickly to a gurney and rushed him in through the doors. Sam could hear Dean bellowing, being told to keep back by the nurses and orderlies.

Lucifer peered out the open van door. "Very dramatic. Still not sure whether it will be a simple death, or a long drawn-out slide into permanent vegetable-hood. Not sure yet what mood will strike me. But we'll see."

Hands freed, Sam grabbed his injured hand, squeezing his scarred palm. He spoke low and evenly. "I know you're not real and I know Bobby's gonna be okay. He was breathing. He had a pulse."

"You sure? You really, truly sure? Because I don't see any medical degrees in your back pocket, there, Sammy."

Looking at the blood on his hands, his legs, the van floor, Sam ground his thumb over and over into his palm. Pain was real. Pain was real. "He'll be okay. You aren't real, and you have no say over what happens here."

"Sam!" Dean shouted from the Emergency room doors.

Lucifer smiled. "Doesn't mean you aren't still in Hell, kiddo," he said, winking.

Sam didn't stay to see if Lucifer stayed or disappeared, just flung himself out of the van and into the hospital after Bobby.

-.-.-  
>(that's all)<p> 


End file.
